100 WWI Shipwrecks Are Being Eaten By The Sea. Scientists Figured Out How to Save Them.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• The Gallipoli Historic Underwater Park in Turkey’s Dardanelles Strait houses the wrecks of roughly 100 World War I ships.
• As corrosion mars the century-old wrecks, the Deep Heritage project plans to preserve the ships—without laying a finger on them.
• The first installation of “sacrificial anodes” near the HMS Louis employs rods to pull corrosion away from the ship’s metal.

Roughly 100 World War I shipwrecks decorate the seabed of the Dardanelles Strait in Turkey, one of the largest concentrations of wrecks from the war. But the salt water has started eating away at the hulking metal remnants, now over a century old, and researchers turned to a scientific process to aid in preservation. The new Deep Heritage project relies on the help of “sacrificial anodes.”

Cathodic protection isn’t new. It’s just new for ships that are long past the point of seaworthiness. Commonly used on working ships, oil rigs, pipelines, and piers, the process involves attaching rods of zinc, copper, and aluminum to ship metal with copper wires. The cathodic process produces a weak electrical current, inviting corrosive seawater to eat away at the sacrificial anodes first, helping extend the life of the vessels. Importantly, at Gallipoli, it can be done without physically altering the historic metal. It’s never been done at this scale at such a site.

“Cathodic protection for wrecks is not widespread, because underwater cultural heritage [for this period] is still new,” Yusuf Kartal, the historical site’s head of projects, told The Art Newspaper. “These ships contain the stories of soldiers who lost their lives here, [and] our primary objective is to leave this legacy to future generations.”

Experts hope the plan adds at least a few decades, if not many more, to the life of the shipwrecks, but the anodes need replacing every five years.

Created in 2021, the Gallipoli Historic Underwater Park became the first underwater park devoted to WWI and has turned into a popular dive site. Set off the shores of the Gelibolu (Gallipoli) Peninsula in Turkey’s Çanakkale province, these waters were the naval front of the deadly nine-month Gallipoli Campaign of 1915–1916, in which Allied forces—mainly British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops—fought the Ottoman Empire for control of the Dardanelles Strait, the passage linking the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and guarding the approach to the Black Sea and Constantinople. While the fighting ashore ground into months of brutal trench warfare, the battle at sea was decided by mines, torpedoes, and shore-based artillery—the weapons that sent most of these ships to the bottom.

The Ottomans won the campaign, and the battleships, destroyers, submarines, and minesweeping trawlers lost in it, many of them British and French, still lie on the seabed. “Nearly 100 ships, both large and small, were sunk, and hundreds of men lost their lives on them,” Kartal told The Telegraph. “We began looking into ways to protect these historic shipwrecks before corrosion causes them to deteriorate and eventually disappear completely. After all, these wrecks are not just ships. They are important historical monuments that tell the stories of the people who lost their lives there.”

Deep Heritage hopes to protect 17 wrecks, starting with the British Laforey-class destroyer HMS Louis. At just 50 feet below the surface, the Louis is one of the shallower shipwrecks in the strait. “Wrecks in shallow water tend to be a bit beaten up by the waves. The deeper the wreck is, the better preserved it is,” Alexander Dawson, an underwater photographer, told The Telegraph. “On HMS Louis, you can still see the intact boilers from the ship. It’s a really cool place.”

The project surrounded the ship with six anodes, launching the effort that will take place over the next few years. Kartal said the plan focuses on some of the intact wrecks with a real shot of preservation. Next up: the British minesweeper trawler Lundy, sitting 88 feet below the surface.

“The quality of the wrecks is extremely good for the First World War, which makes them so special,” Dawson said. “Many are in very deep, dark, cold water that has preserved them well.”

Not every ship is primed for the project. The SS Milo, a steam-driven passenger ship configured with generators and floodlights for war use, may be too far gone to save. But another ship on the plan is the HMS Majestic, a British battleship popular with divers.

“Diving and swimming over the wrecks of ships from the Gallipoli Campaign opens up a whole new perspective on the history of the campaign,” said Bill Sellars, an Australian researcher, according to Asia Nikkei, “providing a strong connection with the past.”